The European leftist and the USA

European expectations of the emergence of an American social democratic movement after the election of Barack Obama were unrealistic, owing to different historical experiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Social democracy in the United States wouldn't follow the European example.

Recently, I
was reading an article by a columnist in the Wiener Kronenzeitung, a Viennese
tabloid. In it, the author claimed that President Obama was a progressive
moderniser who had taken the reigns of a country with the intention of
initiating a top-down reorganisation along broadly social democratic lines.
However, the author argued, it was sadly too late for Obama to make a
difference: over the past decade, the (fifty-one) star(s) of the US has dimmed,
its politics drifting towards the right. More recently, the New Statesman published a
feature on who the real players of the American left are, as they dolefully
lamented that it clearly isn’t the President.

Whilst I
fully sympathise with the sentiment, Europeans have completely unrealistic
expectations of the US, based on a misunderstanding of both history and
culture. Indeed, the perspective of these articles were completely coloured by
the social democratic credentials of both Austrian and British society,
historical credentials which continue to exist in spite of the continent’s
forced transition into a period of conservatism.

So why
should Europeans not expect social democracy in the US, at least not any time
soon? The reason is that left-wing politics has never had fertile American
ground to grow on until perhaps now.Arguably, the founding of the United States predates
the emergence of leftist movements by over half a century;
proto-socialist thinking was itself a seed that was only sown during the French
Revolution.

With the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the US officially separated itself from
the social injustice and oppression exercised by the European imperial powers
and, prior to that, the Catholic Church. The founding fathers had created a
state based on the Enlightenment ideal, socially just in-itself. Self-evident
was the truth that, “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights”
which include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. That was (and
remains) the theory, even if it has since been proven to exclude the
indigenous population, blacks, Hispanics, those barely hovering above the
poverty line and other minorities.

It was a
revolution, a sudden break from the ruling powers. Social justice in Europe,
however, evolved over time, and fought a century-long battle for its existence.
Leftist politics gradually grew out of this, following on relatively
comfortably from the rationalism of Enlightenment philosophy, and found an
intellectual mouthpiece in thinkers ranging from Hegel, to the utopian
socialists, to the early communists, to Bakunin, to Marx, to Marxists, to
social democrats. Revolutions, uprisings and turmoil ensued as part of its
development, but ultimately social justice was instigated on a relative basis
through political reform. Indeed, as an overriding concept, ‘social justice’ is
a fairly new phenomenon in Europe.

Thus the
founding of the US and the evolution of European social democracy are similar
in that they were both distinct responses to the political oppression of the
‘old order’. Since the US is a state which is by definition just, it was never
an immediate historical inevitability that left-wing movements would develop
there. The powerful notions of individual liberty and equality; the vast
expanses of land and resources 1; the political system that is in principle
stringently democratic – these are not a historical inheritance with which
Europeans are familiar. Rather, a reliance on the state apparatus to serve the
masses generally and protect the weak specifically – a legacy reinforced by
centuries of invasion, two particularly savage wars and a number of
totalitarian systems – is the inheritance of modern European thought.

By way of
history, it’s not a glove which fits the US comfortably. Indeed, there’s a good
cause for assuming that US politics is perhaps inclined to veer towards the
centre-right by default, on account of its libertarian credentials. European
expectations of President Obama were unrealistic: if ‘social democracy’
develops in the US it won’t resemble the traditional European model, just as
democracy in the Middle East won’t necessarily mirror the US standard.
Criticism of the US is far from unjustified, but grand expectations and
sweeping criticisms fail to pick out the wood from the trees, and are no
different from far-right declarations that the EU is a failed socialist super
state.

1 Which
arguably explains why, given the shortage of land and resources, a decade of
war has been necessary.

About the author

Marcus How lives in Essex, UK and is of English and Austrian heritage. He studied philosophy at the University of Nottingham and completed an MA in International Political Economy at King's College, London. He currently works as a political risk analyst, with a focus on Western Europe.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.